TkeMichigan Daily-Saturday, August 16, 1980-Page 7
Husband kills
Playboy's top
1980 Playmate
and himself

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The nude
bodies of Playboy Magazine's 1980
Playmate of the Year and her
estranged husband were found
sprawled in his bedroom yesterday,
and police said the man apparently shot
his wife and then killed himself.
Dorothy Stratten, a statuesque, 20-
year-old blue-eyed blonde from
Canada, had been shot in the face and
was on a bed, said police Lt. Glenn
Ackerman. A 12-gauge shotgun was on
the floor under the body of her husband,
promoter Paul Snider, 29, Ackerman
said.
POLICE SAID the bodies were found
at 12:30 a.m. in Snider's bedroom in a
two-story house under a freeway in
West Los Angeles. Snider shared the
house with two other people.
"This is apparently a murder-
suicide," said Ackerman.
Lt. Dan Cooke said the motive "was
apparently that he was despondent over
the breakup of the marriage."
COOKE SAID Stratten had come to
see Snider on Thursday to discuss their
marriage, but that friends of the couple
were being interviewed by police "to
establish the motive."
Cooke said the county coroner inten-
ded to speed up the autopsy to have
results by today. He said autopsies
normally take days because of a huge
backlog, but because of the notoriety of
this case, the procedure was being
speeded up.
Stratten had appeared in several
films, most recently in Peter

Bogdanovich's "They All Laughed,"
and one called "Galaxina," a science-
fiction film that opened yesterday in
Kansas City, Mo. She also had small
roles in "Americathon" and
"Skatetown, U.S.A."
POLICE SGT. GLEN Varner said a
private detective who had been hired by
the husband talked to Snider on Thur-
sday and that Stratten was at the apar-
tment then, although she had been
living elsewhere for the past two mon-
ths.
Ackerman said the two apparently
died sometime Thursday afternoon.
Varner.said the private investigator
became worried when he couldn't reach
Snider by telephone again, so he called
the two other people who lived in the
house. They opened Snider's bedroom
door and found the couple dead.
"I called Paul. He was a good
friend," said private detective Mark
Goldstein, reached by telephone at his
office.
Goldstein would not comment when
asked if he had been hired by Snider, or
if he worked for Snider's attorney. He
said he couldn't say anything about his
relationship except, "I'm a family
friend."
Stratten first met Snider in Van-
couver, British Columbia, when he
walked into a Dairy Queen restaurant
where she was working, said Jim
Merrill, senior publicist at Playboy
Publications.
Stratten's Canadian upbringing was
something she was proud of.

PLAYBOY PLAYMATE of the Year for 1980 Dorothy Stratton, of Vancouver,
British Columbia, was found dead in her west Los Angeles home yesterday.
Police said she was apparently the victim of a murder-suicide.
Carter courts black vote

(Continued from Page 3)
embrace the platform's jobs plank and
that the Justice Department go on the
offensive against hate groups and
monitor sensitive trials to defuse poten-
tially explosive cases like those which
preceded riots in Miami and Chat-
tanooga.
They also sought representation on
the president's staff and campaign
committees at visible, policymaking
levels and funding from the
Democrataic National Committee for a
voter registration project, "Operation
Big Vote," being run by 70
organizations.
Not everyhone in the session was
pleased with its results. Brenda
Frazier, a delegate from Pittsburgh,
sat silent as many of those around her

cheered and applauded the president.
"It's hard for me to be a believer. It
sounds good, but it sounded good
before," she said of Carter's rhetoric.
"What I wanted him to do was say, 'I
wholeheartedly endorse the plank on
jobs included in the Democratic plat-
form."
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